“Back in my day….” Everyone has heard someone a bit older use a phrase like this. But even young and middle-aged adults have the right to reminisce on a simpler time, since technology has completely changed the way they live in the course of a decade or two.
This is especially true for those who suffer from tech addiction. As the term implies, it’s a step more intense than simply using a smartphone or tablet: tech addiction means that your consumption of digital media has overtaken your real life.
Clearly, this alone is a change in behavior that’s developed alongside technology. But your connected devices are doing more than creating a technological niche—they’re changing the way you live other parts of your life, too. Here are four examples of how your tech might be changing your behavior.
1. You Drive Differently
What do you do at a red light? Pre-tech addiction, you would probably adjust the temperature, check yourself out in the mirror, change the song, hum along… Now, it’s likely that you reach for your phone as soon as you come to a complete stop.
This is one of the worst examples of how tech has changed our behavior because it’s unsafe. You might wait until you’re stopped to look at your phone, but others glance at their devices while they’re actually driving. The Centers for Disease Control and Protection predict that eight people are killed and 1,161 are injured every single day because of distracted driving. No phone call, text or social media post is worth that.
2. You Have Less Patience
Remember when you used to go to the movies, sit down and watch an entire two-hour film? You did it without scrolling through your feeds during lulls or foregoing the flick to just watch the highlight reels or read reviews online. You had the patience to watch an entire, full-length movie.
Technology has made so many of us so much less patient in more ways than one. With the world at your fingertips, you want to know answers right away and you don’t want to wait around for a conclusion that you can find out with a few taps and a swipe.
3. You Focus Less
To that end, you might find it a lot harder to sit down and focus on something that’s important like, say, work. If your phone is buzzing or you see notifications popping up on your desktop, you will find it very hard to get a single task done.